


Let Me Trash Your Love

by trick-please (EveJobs)



Category: Do No Harm (TV)
Genre: Altered States, Cheesy One-Liners, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Electroshock Torture, Gross Misuse of Medical Equipment, M/M, Show-appropriate Bad Dialog, Unrequited Ruben/Jason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 08:50:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8198849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EveJobs/pseuds/trick-please
Summary: When Ruben Marcado first learned about the existence of Ian Price, he was desperate to meet him. He hadn’t quite pictured himself getting tied to his own exam table with dialysis tubes in the process.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a testament to the lengths that a person may go to out of thirst for one man. But if you're reading this, I probably don't have to tell you that, because you're obviously in the same boat. So enjoy.

When Ruben Marcado first learned about the existence of Ian Price, he was desperate to meet him. For weeks, he badgered Jason about it, “We can set it up as a chance meeting, he won’t know who I am,” but Jason wouldn’t budge. Finally, he showed Ruben a newspaper article: 5 injured and 1 dead in mysterious ambulance crash, suspect at large. That settled the discussion.

The curiosity, however, remained. After all, what kind of scientist would he be if he didn’t want to examine the subject of his research face to face? So when Ian became immune to Blackout and started menacing the streets at night again, had Ruben been concerned for his friend? Sure. Had he done everything in his power to help him get rid of Ian for good? Of course. But that didn’t change the fact that secretly, he’d been thrilled at the prospect of getting another chance at meeting him.

He hadn’t quite pictured himself getting tied to his own exam table with dialysis tubes in the process.

 “You know,” Ian says as he tightens the straps around Ruben’s feet, “I could just kill you.”

“Then why don’t you?” Ruben asks. Because that’s a smart thing to say to a rampaging psychopath. His throat still feels tight from being choked against the wall earlier.

“Oh, Ruben,” Ian says, walking up to him and trailing his hand along the table. “Ruben, Ruben, Ruben…” Ruben tries to move out of his reach, but the constraints around his arms keep him in place. Ian’s fingers brush against his hip and he shivers.

“I’m not in the habit of killing people who could still be useful to me.” He puts his fingers on Ruben’s throat, pressing in lightly. “And you seem like a useful kinda guy. Or am I wrong?”

“Yes!” Ruben croaks out. “I-I mean no, you’re not. I can be helpful. Please, just… please don’t kill me.”

“See, that’s what I like to hear!” Ian grins, but his eyes are still screaming murder. He removes his hand and Ruben gasps for air, shuddering. He closes his eyes for a second. _This is happening_ , he thinks, inanely, _this is really happening_.

“Well this is interesting.”

Ruben opens his eyes again. Ian is smirking and pointing his finger at something. He follows the trail with his eyes down to where- oh no.

“That’s- no, no it’s not what you think, it’s just a-a biological reaction, I can explain-“

“Oh really?” Ian raises his eyebrows.

“Look, you were t-touching me a lot and I uh, I don’t exactly get a lot of action,” – he laughs nervously – “but that doesn’t mean that I… I’m not-“

“Enjoying this?” Ian finishes for him. “Oh, I think you are. You’re a little bit of a freak huh? You like getting pushed around? Tied up?” As he’s speaking, he puts his hand on Ruben’s thigh, slowly inching upwards to the bulge in his pants that is getting more obvious by the second.

“No!” Ruben squeaks out, horrified.

“No?” Ian snickers. Then his face lights up. “Oh, I get it. It’s Jason, isn’t it? Wow, now that I think about it, it was so obvious. All these years of working for him, and what did you get in return? His gratitude? His _attention_?”

“Jason and I are frien _jesus christ_ ,” Ruben moans as Ian grinds his palm into his crotch, sending a jolt of pleasure through his body.

Ian smiles deviously. “Hey, I can’t say I blame you. Who could say no to a face like this?” He leans in closer, until their noses almost touch. Ruben can feel Ian’s breath on his lips.

“Don’t,” he whispers.

Ruben has spent a lot of time imagining what it would feel like to kiss Jason. Those long nights in the lab perfecting the Blackout formula, he used to fantasize about Jason surprising him, walking up behind him, massaging his shoulders and leaning over to press his soft lips to Ruben’s. It was silly, of course. Jason didn’t even exist at night.

Ian’s lips aren’t soft. His tongue parts Ruben’s lips without asking for permission, claiming his mouth with such fervor that the back of his head is knocked into the table. Ruben doesn’t respond to the kiss.

Ian pulls back, his face contorted in anger. “Oh what, am I not good enough for you? Are you saving yourself for _Jason_? Get a grip. You and I both know he’s straight as an arrow.”

“And you’re not?”

“Are you surprised? We’re two different people, Ruben, I think you should realize this by now.”

Despite himself, Ruben feels a spike of hope flare up in his chest, but he shakes it off. _He’s just playing you_ , he thinks. _Don’t fall for it_. Mustering up his resolve, he stares straight into Ian’s eyes.

“Exactly,” he says. “You’re not the same. So I’m not interested.” He almost makes it sound convincing.

Ian makes an exaggerated frowning face. “Well, then it looks like you won’t be useful to me after all. That’s too bad, I was just starting to like you! Although…” – he points at the dialysis machine – “Can you tell me how to use this thing?”

“Why?” Ruben asks. “It’s too late to complete your treatment, you ripped the tubes out. We’d have to start over again…”

“Oh no, not for me. I’m gonna use it on you!” Ian grins.

Ruben blanches. “You can’t do that. You might kill me!”

“Well, you win some, you lose some. Besides, you said this cleared out toxins, right? It’s healthy! Unless you were lying to me and this really _was_ supposed to kill me.”

“I wasn’t lying!”

“See, then you should have nothing to worry about! So these tube thingies go into your arm and I press a button, right? Can’t be that hard.”

“It’s not that simple! First you have to join the blood vessels to create a fistula and then- wait no!”

Ruben screams as Ian rams the catheter into his arm.

\--

He doesn’t tell Jason about what happened. He doesn’t tell him whose blood it is on the wall either. Jason doesn’t need to concern himself with these things. There are more pressing matters at hand.

When Jason turns, he’s ready.

“Hello, Ian.”

Ruben has never considered himself a violent person. He hadn’t been the kind of kid who got into fights often, and even when he did, he never fought back. His mom always told him he needed to stand up for himself more. Now he doesn’t even try to hide his smile as Ian writhes in pain underneath him. One push of a button, simple as that. And if he goes a little overboard with the shocks? That’s only for insurance, he tells himself.

“This is for your own good,” he tells Ian. “I know you don’t believe me, but I _am_ trying to help.”

Ian only screams.

Ruben licks his lips when the look in Ian’s eyes changes from furious to pleading.

\--

“Maybe you deserve it.”

Ruben knows it’s a bad idea. He knows, okay? After all, he’s the one who made the goddamn drug.

But Ian has a point. He may be a dangerous maniac who threatened his family, but he has a point.

Ruben stares at the pill in Ian’s hand and thinks about all the times he’s helped Jason do something stupid, or dangerous, or illegal, or all of the above, without getting anything in return. _He’s using you_. _You think you guys are friends_? A week ago, Ruben would have defended him. Even if Jason never made any indication that he reciprocated his feelings, they had _something_ , right? He thinks about how happy Jason had been when the kill-drug seemed to work, how he’d kissed him and called him a genius. _Because in that moment, I was useful to him_ , he thinks bitterly.

Ian looks at him expectantly. Ian who tried to kill him with a baseball bat. Ian who kissed him. Ian who he tortured until he passed out. Ian whose hand has been persistently attached to Ruben’s shoulder for most of the night.

Ruben has never even smoked weed.

He takes the pill.

\--

Ruben’s heart is pounding in his chest. He just jumped through a window, people are shooting at him and he’s still not entirely sure if any of this is real.

Ian grabs his hand and pulls him along and so he concentrates on that, on the roughness of Ian’s palm and how he doesn’t let go even when Ruben catches up to him. He almost misses it when they reach the car and Ian finally pulls away.

Ian parks in another alley about five minutes later. “I don’t think they followed us,” he says, “but let’s ditch the car for now just in case. I know a decent burger place a couple blocks down, you good to walk?”

It turns out it doesn’t matter much if Ruben is good to walk, because Ian slams him into the wall as soon as he gets out of the car. For a scary second Ruben thinks that maybe Ian has decided to kill him after all, but then Ian’s mouth is on him and he doesn’t think much of anything anymore.

Now that the adrenaline of the chase has cleared out of his system, he can feel the amphetamines cursing through his bloodstream again, and he would be mad at himself for making the drug have such a long-lasting effect if he didn’t feel so _fucking amazing_.

Ian is sucking a vicious mark into his neck and Ruben’s neurotransmitters are firing off at alarming rates, flooding his system with serotonin and dopamine and something else he can’t remember right now, something that makes Ian’s hands on him feel like fire and all he wants to do is get burnt up.

Ruben is vaguely aware that some sober version of himself has a problem with this situation, but he can’t for the life of him remember why when Ian pushes his knee up between his thighs and grinds against him. He can hear someone moaning and calling Ian’s name and it takes him a second to realize that the sounds are coming out of his own mouth. His hands have somehow wandered into the back of Ian’s jeans, kneading, pulling him closer, like he’s trying to absorb him into his own body. Ian laughs against his neck.

“Look at you, Ruben. Finally taking charge. Doesn’t it feel good to get what you want?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Ruben whispers. He tilts his head to meet Ian’s eyes and feels something bubbling up in his chest. He’s waited so long to have those eyes look at him with desire, and who cares if it’s not really Jason behind them, who the fuck cares? Ruben says “You’re beautiful,” and he’s about to say something even stupider, but thankfully Ian cuts him off by crashing their mouths together, and this time Ruben kisses back. He has to stand up on his toes a little to get the angle right and it seems like the only thing keeping him from taking off and floating away is Ian’s weight pressing him into the wall.

Feeling a little adventurous, Ruben takes Ian’s lower lip into his mouth and bites down. Ian growls in response, rolling his hips, and Ruben can feel his erection pressing against him even through the denim. He tries to get his hands between them, overcome with a desire to touch, but Ian is faster.

He quickly undoes Ruben’s belt and shoves his hand inside his pants. Ruben whimpers as Ian’s broad palm closes around him. He’s almost painfully hard.

While he begins stroking him slowly, Ian licks a strip up to Ruben's ear. “Okay, I don’t usually do this,” he says, his voice low and heavy, “but I’m feeling generous tonight and I have to admit you’ve got a nice cock, so.”

With that, Ian sinks down to his knees and Ruben barely has the time to process what’s happening before he’s swallowed him up in one go. He wants to tell Ian to slow down, that he’s never even gotten a real blowjob before and he needs some adjustment time, or something, but “Holy _fuck_ ” is about all he manages to get out when Ian immediately sets a quick and brutal pace, like he’s trying to set some kind of record.

Ruben’s hands wander into Ian’s hair because he needs something to hold on to, but Ian swats them away and pulls off to glare at him. “Nuh-uh, not happening,” he says matter-of-factly. “Hands on the wall. And don’t move.”

Ruben doesn’t really know what to make of that, but he’s not about to complain to the guy who’s sucking him off, and if he’s being honest with himself, he’s actually glad not to be the one calling the shots in this situation.

So he keeps still, back pressed against the wall, letting Ian take him apart at his own pace, and it takes an embarrassingly short time before he can feel the pressure building up in his gut. He barely manages to yell out a warning, but Ian doesn’t seem to care, he just keeps going until Ruben is completely drained and going soft in his mouth.

Afterwards, Ian wipes his face and gets up nonchalantly, letting Ruben collapse against him like a bag of bones. “Alright,” he says, “you hungry? I wasn’t kidding about the burger place.”

Ruben tries to remember how to breathe. “What about you? Don’t you need-“

“You can worry about me later,” Ian cuts him off with a wink. “An Ian Price party don’t stop ‘til the clock reads 8:25.”

\--

The next few days are hell.

Ruben doesn’t come into work, doesn’t look at his phone, doesn’t even leave the apartment except once to stock up on food.

He knows that, _theoretically_ , his brain chemistry is mostly at fault here. _Theoretically_ , the anxiety and restlessness he feels are a result of depleted neurotransmitters, and not necessarily an indicator of his life falling apart.

Except he’s pretty sure it is.

And _theoretically_ , the reason he fucked everything up in the first place was only the result of an altered mental state induced by a particularly potent MDMA synthesis.

Except no one forced him to take that pill.

 _Take charge of your life_ , Ian told him. What a joke. His life has revolved entirely around one asshole and his shitty feud with himself for the past five years.

Ruben isn’t in charge of any of it.

Except for this one thing, the one shitty decision that is now laid before him. Ian wants the kill-drug. Jason wants the kill-drug.

Ruben never wanted to kill anybody.

Not that that matters to either of them. And he knows it’s not going to stop, knows his phone has been blowing up for days.

Fuck both of them. He’s not going to do it. He starts looking up flights to Jamaica and doesn’t think about the formula. He doesn’t think about it when he lies awake in bed at night, doesn’t think about it when he paces around the living room to shake off another bout of chills, and he certainly doesn’t think about Ian blowing him when he finally feels grody enough to take a shower.

After five days, he runs out of coffee.

\--

Returning to the lab is an inevitability.

Ruben honestly can’t say who he’s making the drug for. For science, is what he’d like to think. It doesn’t take long before Jason and Ian start pestering him again, only when Jason does it he whines about having a son now and how Ruben is his only hope and when Ian does it he bends Ruben over his desk and whispers filthy things into his ear while he fucks him.

This, too, feels inevitable.

There’s a string of excuses that Ruben comes up with now that he can’t lay the blame on questionable party drug consumption anymore – having Ian as a willing participant around the lab is actually useful for his research; he needs to stay on Ian’s good side to protect his family; any time they spend together distracts Ian from fucking up somebody else’s life – really, Ruben is doing a service to society at large here.

He still can’t help feeling somewhat dirty about it. Every day it gets harder to look Jason in the eye, knowing exactly what his orgasm face looks like, or where that split lip really came from. He can’t tell him. He can’t. Jason would be disgusted with him, or worse, he’d be concerned. Ruben couldn’t deal with that.

So when Jason asks him about the very obvious hickey he has one day, he makes up some excuse about a nurse he’s dating. Jason says something to the effect of being happy for him and then predictably continues to be too preoccupied with his own issues to notice anything.

Keeping Ian in check is harder. Ian is convinced that Ruben is still working for Jason behind his back. His strategy for winning Ruben over seems to change daily. Sometimes he threatens, sometimes he seduces, most of the time he does both in equal measures.

Ruben wants to think that he’s not affected by it, that maybe it’s really him who is taking advantage of Ian, that he’s outsmarting him by pretending to give in, but it’s hard to believe that when his face is pressed into the wall with Ian buried deeply inside him, one hand reaching around to form a tight ring around the base of his dick, forcefully denying him the right to come until he begs for it, until he promises Ian over and over that he’s _his_ , not Jason’s, never Jason’s.

“Good boy,” Ian says when he’s satisfied with Ruben’s pleas and finally starts stroking him off earnestly, “See how good I can be to you when you behave? Do you think Jason would ever do this for you? He’s made you his bitch for so long, but he doesn’t even take advantage of it, doesn’t even have the _decency_ to give you what you need.”

After Ruben comes all over his hand, he wipes it off on the back of his lab coat.

“Think very carefully about what you want to do, Ruben,” he says as he leaves the lab. “Think about what’s important to you. Are you really willing to risk it all for a guy who will drop you like a hot potato when all this is over?”

Ruben keeps working on his contingency plan.

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, I cut it off here because this is how far canon will take me before cruelly snatching my son away from under my nose in an undignified offscreen death (#RubenDeservedBetter)
> 
> If it is at all to anyone's interest, I might be compelled to write a canon-obliterating sequel. I have some ideas. Very bad ideas. For now I will return to my regularly scheduled sin and anxiously await your comments, as well as hopefully some more entries into this hellpit of a sub-fandom.
> 
> Find me on tumblr @[trick-please](http://trick-please.tumblr.com/) to talk to me about this trainwreck of a show, or any other Lin-related sin.


End file.
